Hannah's Adoption Story

Hannah's adoption story probably should begin with infertility. However, I'm going to go another route. Because the truth is, we are infertile. But sometimes, I just want to focus on the miracle that Hannah is and not on the fact that we can't get pregnant. I would take Hannah over any biological child. And truth be told, I'm over the infertile stuff. I'm not a post infertility adoptive mom. I'm just a mom. A mom to precious girls that I love more than any earthly thing (after my husband).
The story begins with a Saturday night, January 31, 2009. Matt and I went to a local high school basketball game. Followed by a fun late night game night. During game night one of Matt's friends asked us how the adoption process was going. Matt told him that our homestudy had been finalized just three days before and now we were just waiting. We had been told our wait would probably be around 18 months so we weren't anticipating much for a while. Matt's friend then replied, "But you could get a call any day, right?" Matt and I both said, "Right, but that never happens so probably not."
(Click here to read why we chose the domestic adoption route.)
The next morning I was at an autopsy for a few hours (that was interesting!) and then we headed home. I'm not sure what we did for the next few hours but around 2pm we were headed out to pick up Matt's parents to go to Menards (for who knows what) and Meijer to get groceries for the Super Bowl party we were going to host that evening.
I was standing at the sink eating a peanut butter sandwhich and Matt was sitting at the penninsula when his phone rang. He looked at it and said, "I don't recognize the number, should I answer it?" I said, "I don't care, whatever."
Matt answered it and he looked at me and mouthed "a baby." I freaked and may have told him to shut up because that's not a funny joke.
He put the lady on speaker phone and we learned about a healthy premature African American baby girl in the NICU that was two days old, 4lbs 14ozs and we were picked to parent her.
We asked for a few minutes to pray about it. Looking back, I'm not sure what and why we prayed, but I guess that's always a good response, right?
We were so freaked out. We began second guessing our decision to adopt. We began to think maybe we didn't want kids after all. We thought maybe this was too fast and we should say no. We didn't want a girl. We assumed we would have only boys.
Then we thought, well, we could at least meet her.
We called the social worker back and said we were ready to go to the hospital to meet her, but Matt and I both agreed that we weren't really sure about this. After all we had nothing, I mean nothing ready for a baby, in addition to the fact we had just moved into a new to us house and our house was no where near where we wanted it to look.
We were going to pick up Matt's parents anyway so we headed over there. They were in the garage when we got there and we told them, "We have a baby - maybe (we were still freaked out)." They were shocked. I called my parents and told them they have a granddaughter - maybe (we were still freaked out). We drove to the hospital and found our way to the NICU where we met the tiniest baby girl we had ever seen. We both just stared at her, not knowing what to do while nurses buzzed around us calling us "mom and dad" and asking us to make medical decisions. We were still freaked out. (Are you noticing a theme?)
We stayed at the hospital for a few hours, falling in love with the tiny bundle and then on our way home with packets of information about newborns, we realized we had no food for our Super Bowl party.
As our friends arrived, they could tell we had something to share. They were all staring at us strangely as Matt and I grinned like lunatics.
Once everyone was seated and the game was started we told them our exciting news. I spent the entire game looking at name books while Matt tried to watch what ended up being a fantastic Super Bowl game.
We didn't sleep Sunday night.
Monday morning I got up early and went to the gym. Matt randomly showed up and asked me if I was sure about this. I said yes, if you are. He said yes and left. I finished my run.
Monday I worked all day. I told my boss about the baby. We spent Monday from about 7pm to 11pm holding our new little girl. We named her Hannah and we signed over the first check to our agency, officially starting the adoption of little Hannah Janay Hope.
We didn't sleep Monday night.
Tuesday was my day off. I walked through Babies R Us with Matt's mom and we bought a carseat, diapers and some bottles and registered for everything else. We tentatively scheduled my baby showers in three weeks so I needed just the basics until then.
We spent Tuesday from about 4pm-midnight holding and video taping our brand new, tiny firstborn baby girl. Marveling that we had a baby and we had no idea how to hold her, feed her, change her, bathe her. But we certainly were already in love with her.
We didn't sleep Tuesday night.
Wednesday I was able to be off at 3pm and we got to the hospital and we were able to bring her home by 6pm.
We didn't sleep Wednesday night.

January 30th will forever be the special day our firstborn little girl was born. We didn't know her then but God knew what He was about to do (and that He wasn't going to let us wait an additional 18 months for our child!)

Two years later, we sleep now. And are continually amazed at God's provision in putting Hannah in our family. She is a joy and a blessing to us.
We love you little Hannah bear!